Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 6120347" data-attributes="member: 27160">I thought I answered as well as any who are advocating "the DM must decide when the paladin falls" have; to wit, I think that method is superior because I prefer it.The paladin is the class that dedicates itself as both a "warrior for good" and a "moral examplar" while relying on powers driven by faith in the divine. In 4E there are actually alternatives to the paladin (the Avenger and Invoker, mainly), but in DDN it looks like it'll just be the paladin.Reading the exchanges from this side, that sounds somewhat like pot calling kettle, but I'll try to be more exact and dispassionate - even though that doesn't seem to result in any increase in understanding...None of which really resolves the problem. Morality and ethics - even such aspects as 'honour' and the keeping of 'oaths' - are really not amenable to objective judgement. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] put it well: philosophers do not argue about what it means to fall off a bridge, but they have spent over 3,000 years arguing about what it means to break an oath.That we don't need to take the argument to such fine points as philosophers do is also not the point. The reason they have been arguing about it for 3,000+ years is that it's really not an objective "thing".The same applies with "moral authorities". The entire concept is fraught with difficulties; philosophical arguments rage on about what the phrase really even means. It's extremely hard to argue, in a polytheistic setting (as RPG worlds tend to be), that such a thing as a "moral authority" exists at all. The whole concept is, being kind, muddled thinking.Oh, and I actually said "an imaginary lifetime second-guessing what the gods/the "powersofgood"/the DM thinks "lawfulness and goodness" means". Such "imaginary lifetimes" typically last only a few game months - perhaps 8-12 levels - so it's really not as extreme as you might have read it to be.If some players want to play without taking account of the realities of their situation good luck to them. I and, I think, most of those I play with simply don't live our lives that way, let alone play games that way.1) The same applies the other way about; if you want DM control over paladins falling just say "the DM can decide that you lose all your class abilities when you act in a way that (s/he thinks) is "evil" or "chaotic". Here is a summary guide as to the sort of thing that s/he might consider "evil" or "chaotic", but any actual judgements will necessarily be made on an ad hoc basis as the situation seems to warrant".My worry is not, frankly, that the paladin will have a DM-controlled "fall" mechanic - that is, as you say, easily ignored - but that other game features will be designed to suit this. So the paladin, absent a fall, will be more powerful than other characters. And such muddled inanities as "Detect Evil" will be cemented into the class (and the system). These sorts of "features" would make the entire class - possibly even the entire system - unusable to me as written.</blockquote>

Verification